


Coming of Age

by Lt_Zoe_Jebkanto



Series: The Unnamed Road [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Family Drama, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-09
Packaged: 2018-02-07 19:54:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1911717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lt_Zoe_Jebkanto/pseuds/Lt_Zoe_Jebkanto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coming of age means more than having one's own life, but taking the stand that will make that life truly one's own.  Sirius Black POV</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Summons

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the "Unnamed Road" series, though I hope that for anyone versed in Potter-lore, it would stand on its own without having read "The World Beyond the Window", "On the Night of the Full Moon", "Starry Nights and Dog Daze" or "Choices".

Coming of Age

The Summons

Flying. 

Fast and low. Skimming the ground with maybe an eighth inch to spare. No room for telltale light to squeeze out from under my wheels. Low enough to spray up gravel as I swerved round the corner and to feel the bounce of an occasional rock as it sent a shudder up through the tires of my bike. Fast enough to feel the resistance of the air against my chest and hear its whining in my ears. 

Flying while I muttered the spell to make the low growling sound of my motor raise to a snarl, then to a roar. Loud enough to break up the run of my thoughts. Noisy enough to rattle the windows of the houses all up and down Grimmauld Place.

Riding loud and visible, dressed like a Muggle, in the denim and leather Lily had picked out for me yesterday. 

Only yesterday.

Riding like nobody who would ever be welcome in the House of Black.

I could picture the pained disgust on my Father’s face as well as the fury and indignation on my Mother’s. Hear their exchanged comments as they came to the parlour window to see what was causing all the racket.

Look, Nocturna, I can scarcely believe how Sirius has turned out. he’d say. It’s the companions he chose, those Mudbloods he fell in with at Hogwarts. They’ve brought him low, debased him to the point of madness. 

She’d scowl, then nod. He’s disgraced and dishonored all of us in this family, she’d say. And now he’s adding insult to injury, coming here looking like that. You’d think he’d show a little more courtesy, a little more respect… 

That brought a jolt of regret. 

This morning she might be right. Might need to be right. 

So I’d keep my silence about it if she said anything on the subject. Give her whatever satisfaction a comment like that might bring. Seemed the least I could do. 

But changing clothes would’ve taken time I didn’t have. Not when there were so many questions shouting, shouting, shouting in my head. Demanding answers. Right answers. Right now! 

The very act of putting on formal wizard’s robes would have lent weight to those questions. Solemnity. Worse, it would feel like they’d already been given the answers I didn’t want to hear. 

And so what if I hadn’t come dressed as a proper Wizard from a fine old family? The point was, I’d come.

I wasn’t sure why I had.

It wasn’t because I believed this morning’s note. That was a certainty, though I had to admit the thing had given me a shock. Of course, so had that other letter, the one I’d received only a little more than twenty four hours ago now. And what had come out of that first message? An unexpected hope, and then… 

And then, nothing! No, worse than nothing! An echo of disappointment and betrayal. A hurt deeper than I could have imagined after all this time. 

Maybe, I’d told myself half a hundred times in the last hour, yesterday’s owl had brought me a false message. It was an idea with darker, if less painful, implications. It might have been a fake, sent by someone else entirely. It could have been a trap. 

So why should today’s be any different? 

Because nobody would lie about something like this, whispered a wordless little voice somewhere deep in my mind. Not even your Mother would do that. And certainly not your Father. 

I muttered the spell to call up the bike’s motor sound again. Muttered again. And then again. 

Made the sound louder, louder all the way to blasting.

I didn’t want to listen to that little voice. Didn’t want to hear any sense in what it was saying. Because then I’d have to at least consider there was truth in its arguments. Then I’d have to believe it had a reason for making them. 

That was something I wouldn’t, I couldn’t do.

Because then the words in this morning’s note might be real.

And that was impossible.


	2. The Warning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because you see some of your family within yourself, you see something of them within you... (Lily Potter)

The Warning

 

Late. Late, late, late. I knew it. Oh, man, oh man, oh Merlin’s beard, I was late and Lily was gonna do for me! Probably twice over. Once for being late, then again when she knew I had someplace else to be this evening and could only stay for a short while. 

Just a little further to go now… A minute, two at most and I’d be swooping into her side garden… But that wasn’t going to be soon enough. There’d be no slipping into the meeting and finding a nice dim corner to lurk in. 

Oh, no. Lily Potter would have none of that. She was going to stick a spell on the door again. Have it play a full trumpet fanfare when I opened it. Or one that would make it exclaim “Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen! Your attention please! Now presenting the one and only Mister Sirius Black!!” 

Still, even that would be better than the time James rigged the door with a dung-bomb. At least I knew that wouldn’t be happening again. Ever. Not after the thing backfired into the meeting instead of out into the hallway where I stood, completely unaffected! 

Closer. I could see the green roof of the Potter’s house. It grew brighter, larger. And that was their street below me now- and their garden coming into view! Half a minute, no more! “Descendo!” I murmured, clenching my fists around the handlebars of my bike, tighter and then tighter still, as if the strength of my grip could hurry the landing.

I was tempted to try the new spell I’d been working to perfect last night. Streaking silent and invisible beneath the stars was one thing. But for the adventure of riding Muggle-style on a flat road, it needed the sound of a motor. I thought I’d gotten a pretty good one going. It would sound so cool for my landing! But how much noise did I want to make to announce my arrival if I was the last to get there? 

Well, maybe, after all, I wouldn’t be the final one to arrive. It was too bad more witches and wizards hadn’t taken up travel by motorbike. Then there’d be other vehicles by the house to offer me a clue! Wouldn’t be bad for the little shop I was trying to start up, either! There was no way to tell from outside whether the others had already come through the Floo network or simply apperated here already! 

Of course, chided an annoying little voice in my head, if I’d used one of those more common means of Wizarding travel, I wouldn’t be late in the first place!

Coming down faster now, passing the green shuttered windows of a second story bedroom… I murmured the spell for resuming visibility as I angled around the corner of the house toward the side garden. Didn’t need a shadow to land safely- not strictly speaking. But at this speed it made it easier to judge the angle of descent. My silhouette appeared beside me, flicking fast along the wall above the kitchen door and then it was coasting across the ground beneath me, dark green across the grass, brown on the garden path. It slapped up under the tires of my bike, bouncing me up and down on the seat. Gravel sprayed up around me as I swerved to miss an oncoming rose bush before it could get me stuck in a thorny situation. 

“You’re late, Sirius.” The voice behind me was Lily’s all right. There was none of her usual humour in it. “The meeting started fifteen minutes ago.”

“Sorry.” I climbed off my bike. With a tap of my wand I secured it beside the bush, then looked up at her. “I had to go see someone about...” 

Lily wasn’t listening. She had turned away and was walking up the front steps. I followed her into the hall. Behind the door that led to their small study, I could hear the murmur of voices- James, Remus, James again. Frank Longbottom, Peter Pettigrew, Allastor Moody. Lily stopped me as I put a hand on the knob. “No. Don’t go in there.”

“But, Lily, it’s why I’ve come.”

“Is it?” There was a set to her jaw and something hard in her bright green eyes I had never seen before.

“Well… yeah. Why else?”

She shook her head. “That’s what I keep asking myself. I mean, if you took this seriously, you wouldn’t be turning up late half the time.”

“But Lily…”

“Oh, come off it, Sirius. Don’t play innocent with me. I’ve known you since we were all at school together, remember? When have you ever taken anything seriously except maybe that silly bike of yours?”

That stung, though I wasn’t sure if it was more her slur on my character or the insult to my pride and joy. “Look, you’re not being fair. I wasn’t off, larking around. I was talking to someone about the shop I’m trying to start. There’s a space for lease finally opened up just off of Diagon Alley. Not far from my flat, either… ” 

I kept my voice low, so I wouldn’t disturb the talk on the other side of the door. Allastor Moody still, I noticed with half an ear. Sounded like the Auror was giving a lecture of some kind, probably something to do with his work catching Dark Wizards for the Ministry of Magic, though I couldn’t quite catch the words. “Look, Lily, I mean it, I’m sorry. I know this is important. I hate it that Voldemort has so many people in an uproar over power being given to those whose Wizarding blood is purest, when we all have the same Magical ability to do spells and charms! But this is the first really good location that’s come available and...”

She was shaking her head. The anger had gone out of her face. What I saw there was worse. Deep shadows of tiredness under her eyes. Strain that gave her features an unusual look of fragility. “Magical ability? Yes, maybe we all have that. But power? No, Sirius. Don’t lump the two things together! Maybe for now we can all do our spells and charms, but if Voldemort has his way, it’ll be a lot worse than arguments! Any child James or I might have is going to be barred from Hogwarts because I’m Muggle-born.”

“But that’s what’s so stupid!” I gestured her into the tiny sitting room across the hall from the closed study door, then moved to the window and stood looking out into the afternoon garden. After a moment, she came to stand beside me. “Lily, say whatever you want about me not taking Voldemort seriously enough. You’re entitled to your opinion. But look, we both know there’s no sense, no reason, in the things he says! Never has been. I used to listen to my family go on and on about his great ideas for years and they never made sense to me! Didn’t then, don’t now. Pureblood, Muggle-born, mixed blood, I dunno… It always seemed to be an argument about nothing, especially once I got to Hogwarts and saw how little a person’s background had to do with how formidable their Magical talent was! Isn’t the only difference between all of us the way in which we were raised? We’re all Magical aren’t we? Look, I’m not saying this to get round you for being late. But Lily, there is nothing, nothing wrong with how you were born! You were one of the cleverest Witches in the class at school, and even if you weren’t, you’re one of the bravest, most honest people I know!”

Glancing toward her, I saw the gleam of tears on her cheeks before her dark red hair swung forward to hide her face. Her shoulders shook with silent tears and she was hugging herself as if she was cold. 

“You’re such an idiot, Sirius,” she said, but there was no anger in the words, nothing bitter or hurtful. Only a hint of a smile and something like pity. “You came from a family that’s among Voldemort’s biggest supporters and still you can’t see how bad it is, even though you hated it so much you felt you had to either leave home or go mad.”

“Well, yeah.” I nodded. Waited to hear what she was getting at.

Lily sighed. “James says that sometimes you talk about seeing parts of the House of Black in yourself, like having your Mother’s temper. It seems to me, no matter how much you resented them, because you see your family in you, you also see a bit of yourself in them. Maybe even in their friends. You see the good in them because you think underneath their talk, they’re all basically like you are.”

I rested a light hand on her sleeve. Gave her a grin. “See some good in old Sirius, do you? Hey, Lily, I think that’s about the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

I was rewarded with a fleeting grin, before she swatted my hand away. “Well, don’t let it go to your head! Sirius, you look at the crowd around Voldemort and you see your family. I’ve heard you say they waste time on stupid, outdated ideas, that they’re ignorant or misguided.” 

I nodded. Outdated ideas? Yeah. I remembered seeing something like sadness in my Father’s face when he told Cousin Andromeda it would be unfair to send her daughter to Hogwarts, because her mixed heritage would make her unable to keep up. Still, though he was Head of the House of Black, he hadn’t tried to stop Nymphadora from going. 

Ignorant? Sure. I could almost hear my Mother listing off countless ways that wizards were different than, cleverer than, worthier than, more honourable than, in short, better in every way than, Muggles. Not that I’d ever really known a true Muggle, but the ones with whom I’d had brief conversations- in shops or pubs with James- seemed like perfectly nice, ordinary people to me. 

Misguided? I’d seen that too, in Reg’s worried eyes, after he told our Father the world beyond our garden was casting a spell to lure me out of the family. 

“Yeah…” I said. “That’s probably right.” 

“But, Sirius, it isn’t!” she exclaimed. The last of the tears were still shining in her bright green eyes, but there was no sign of tiredness or fragility in her now. This time it was her turn to raise a hand and lay a light touch on my arm. “I don’t know if it was something you were born with or you developed while you were at school, but you had a line you wouldn’t or couldn’t cross. One that made you walk away. Not everybody has that line, Sirius! Or they get so caught up in looking at all the promises Voldemort dangles in front of them they eventually lose track of where they drew it. That’s especially true for his closest supporters.”

“Lily, if we keep talking about us and them, aren’t we doing the same thing they are?”

She was quiet for a moment. “Only if we try to lump all Voldemort’s followers together. Like if we say it’s all the old Pureblood families that want him in power.” Lily sighed. “That’s way to simple. We can’t say all of them from Slytherin are with him either, and we can’t rule out that he may have gathered some followers from among the other Hogwarts Houses. That’s why we are trying so hard to put together a complete list of all those in Voldemort’s innermost circle, those so-called Death-Eaters of his.”

I shuddered. “Merlin’s beard, that’s an awful name.”

Lily nodded. “Awful people. They won’t be content for long with keeping mixed blood or Muggle-born children out of schools or deciding who’ll be able to get what sort of shop! They’ll want to control the jobs in the Ministry of Magic, get people in place to make Wizarding law! And we can guess who those laws will favor can’t we? Now, with all these stories in the Prophet that some of Voldemort’s enemies have been disappearing over the last few months, I’m not certain even those laws will satisfy his thirst for power.” 

I’d read those stories too. All of us had. We’d been spending more and more time in Order of the Phoenix meetings, discussing them. Speculating over whether or not there was truth in them. Such wild tales. Dreadful. Terrifying. But hearsay. Gossip. Impossible rumours of illegal, unspeakable spells- even the three so-called “unforgivable curses”- being used to torture information from Voldemort’s opposition, or to demand obedience from them. 

Would any wizard, no matter how dark, really resort to that sort of thing? While the memory of a glass case full of dark arts objects on proud display in my parents’ house was enough to make my skin go crawly all over, I couldn’t quite imagine them being used on anybody. Well, maybe, if my Mother lost her temper, she might, in the heat of rage, be more than tempted to snatch one up and- 

A harder shudder this time. Horrible, sickening thought. 

But could even someone as cruel and arrogant as she was, lay out a plan in cold blood to use a dream bender or thought-extractor? That seemed like something out of an ancient, half nightmare lesson in Professor Binns’ History of Magic class. Not something that would happen nowadays…

The sense of murky unreality was enhanced by the fact that, to date, none of the names mentioned in the Prophet were ones we’d recognized, though the newspaper’s reports suggested they were witches and wizards from other parts of the country. People belonging to other groups like our own. Resistance groups. 

It was only in the late hours of night that I couldn’t quite shake the feeling there was more than a little truth in those reports. That they were more than stories designed to have those of us who disagreed with Voldemort’s ideas so frightened we’d do nothing to oppose them. Lying wide awake, staring at the shadowed ceiling of my rented flat, I felt the growing possibility that someday we might learn much more than we ever wanted to know about how Voldemort dealt with his enemies… 

But on a bright afternoon those shadows seemed smaller, further away and all those horrible stories mainly the stuff of tangled dreams. 

Almost anyway. Not quite.

I curled my hand into a fist inside my pocket, before it could start playing with the folded parchment resting in there.

Maybe, if I could trust what was written there, we’d be learning a bit more truth, inside truth, really soon now… Find out what we had to fear from the Dark Lord and what was the product of our imaginations…

Or, maybe not. My meeting at the Leaky Cauldron might yield no new information at all about the Death-Eaters and their intentions, give me nothing more than the same old Voldemort line I’d heard for years and years at home. 

But information wasn’t really what I was going there after anyway, was it? 

“Lily,” I said, defying a moment’s ripple of unease. “You know as well as I do, you can’t believe every rumour you read about in the Prophet.” 

“Oh, Sirius!” Lily shook her head. “I thought you were supposed to be so bright! Just try for a minute thinking about… well, sorry about this, well, someone like your Mother. When you left home, she said you’d never be welcome back in the family. You could’ve starved and she wouldn’t have lifted a finger. I couldn’t see you doing that to a child of yours, no matter how angry you were.”

“Well,” I said. “That’s not a very convincing example, is it? I mean, I think she knew I wasn’t really about to lie down and let myself starve.”

Lily stared at me for a moment. Then, to my surprise, she burst into a gale of laughter. “Oh, Sirius! Did I hear you actually defending her?” 

“Hardly.” I said, shaking my head. “She really is a truly dreadful person. And you’re right. I don’t know how far she’d go to feel real power in her hands.”

Behind us, there was the creaking of wood as the study doors opened, then closed.   
Footsteps crossed the hall, then James was coming into the sitting room. “Sirius! I thought I heard you come in! What are you two on about? Come on in to the meeting! There’s something Allastor’s brought to our attention that I think you should hear.”

I looked at Lily. She nodded at me. “Go ahead,” she said. “I’m not really angry with you. I had some news yesterday that, well, with so much going on right now, it’s got me a bit on edge. I think I took it all out on you. I know you care about what the Order is doing. But, Sirius, please, I mean it. Think about what I said, won’t you? About the way you look at Voldemort and his followers?” Her hand brushed my chest, rested there for a moment, just above my heart as she looked at me with solemn green eyes. “Don’t let your loyalty blind you to what they might be capable of. I don’t want to see you set yourself up to get hurt.” 

Then, turning away, she gestured me to follow her husband into the meeting. 

But James was moving further into the study, following his gaze as it rose toward the top of the window behind us. 

“Owl post coming in,” he said. His words were followed an instant later by a light tap, tap, tap on the glass. Stepping past me, he opened the window and gathered in a small silvery owl. “Great!” he exclaimed, staring down at the writing on the envelope tied to its leg. “I was expecting to either see or hear from Professor Dumbledore about a note that arrived here this morning. Go ahead in, Sirius. Help yourself to something to eat. Lily and I’ll be right in.”


	3. The Assignment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How do you reveal knowledge of a spy among the Death Eaters, without letting the one hiding within The Order of the Phoenix know who it might be...?

The Assignment

 

There was a large bowl of ginger lime splash on the old oaken desk in the corner, a pan with a single fat dark brownie, a half plate of butterscotch biscuits and a tremendous bowl that had been half emptied of potato crisps. Alice Longbottom, who sat next to it, smiled and nodded to me as I came in. She motioned to the serving ladle, which rose and, with a graceful flourish, filled a small plastic glass with bright green liquid. The glass, in turn, followed her gesture and sailed toward me. My hand circled it as I started toward the couch where Peter Pettigrw was sliding over to make room. 

“What’d I miss?” I whispered as I sat down next to him and gestured toward Allastor Moody who had stopped speaking when I entered.

“Death-Eater,” Peter struggled the words out from behind a mouthful of crisps. “Might be hiding in the Order of the Phoenix. Really a servant of the Dark Lord.” 

“A spy?” I looked round the study. Two dozen or so Witches and Wizards were spilling out of stuffed chairs, onto footstools, floor cushions and the carpet. All had faces I knew. I turned back to Peter. “Here? In the Order? Someone in this room?”

“Almost certainly, Sirius,” It was Allastor Moody who answered from where he stood just inside the door. “We’re not absolutely convinced of this yet, but the movements of some of his long-time followers over the past several weeks certainly suggest he knows more than he should about what’s going on in the Order. At any rate, Frank Longbottom has just finished explaining the extra precautions that we’ve set in place to safeguard what goes on in these meetings.”

I turned to Peter. “I can hardly believe this, can you? We’ve been friends with most of these people for ages.”

He sighed, shook his head. He didn’t say anything, but I’d seen the look in his eyes a hundred times before. Peter was worried.

“How dangerous is it, having this spy in our midst?” I asked, glancing around at all the familiar faces. There was Alice, levitating a green cup of splash to plump little Molly Weasley who sat beside her husband Arthur on the window seat. Each of them held an identical red-headed baby in their lap. Remus Lupin, down from the country, was looking over at me from the depths of a huge wing-backed chair in the corner. 

“We don’t really know yet,” said Frank, looking at me from where he sat on a big, green footstool that used to be in James’s parents’ living room. Like Moody, he worked in the Auror’s Office at the Ministry of Magic, investigating the activities of Dark Wizards. “But as I was saying just now, we’ve been putting a variety of confidentiality spells round this room so that nothing that’s said while our meetings go on can be repeated outside these walls.” 

I shook my head. So many people here I’d known for years and years. Some all the way back to my first days at school. Now I could understand what Lily meant about people having lines they would or wouldn’t cross, because the idea of any one of them being in secret agreement with Voldemort and his cruel notions while they sat here laughing and chatting was horrible. Disgusting. No wonder she was upset. 

Alice smiled over at her husband before levitating an empty glass out of his hand and gesturing the ladle to fill it with splash. Frank nodded his thanks to her as the drink sailed back to him. Taking a sip, he turned to Allastor. “Eventually, you know, we’ll have to look beyond just covering the meetings. We need to talk about getting some long-lasting unplottable spells set round the house itself and garden as well. Maybe consider getting a Secret Keeper for James and Lily at some point in the future, too. Especially if we decide that we want to keep meeting here. Was there anything I missed?”

“Well, you did catch sight of Sirius trying to sneak in late again, didn’t you, Frank?” From the doorway, James threw me a teasing grin. Then, stepping into the room, he turned a more serious look to Allastor. A quick nod passed between them before, without another word, Moody strode to the only empty chair in the room and picked up his traveling cloak. 

“It seems that Frank and Allastor have already finished with the main points we needed to cover today.” said James, his gaze sweeping the crowd of watching faces. “Some of you went to a lot of trouble rearranging your plans to come here on rather short notice, so I’m sorry for what I’m about to do. Especially when we haven’t even had enough time fore all the snacks to have been finished off yet.” He flashed a grin, first at Peter, who was popping a butterscotch biscuit into his mouth, and then at Frank, who was doing a neat job taking down his glass of splash. “But we’re cutting the meeting short. There’s been an owl, just in with a message from Professor Dumbledore. He sends his apologies for not being here himself today. He has only now gotten confirmation that the message we received here earlier, the one that prompted this get-together in the first place, appears to be genuine.”

“That means,” said Allastor, sweeping his cloak around his shoulders and starting toward the door. “That we’ll be going ahead with the plans we discussed. Some of you, and you all know who you are, will be off to watch the Floo network for any unusual movements this evening and others will cover the streets we’ve mapped out in East London. For the rest of you, please wait at your homes for the owl announcing the time of our next meeting.”

There was the scrape of chairs, the rustle of cloaks. James worked his way toward me through the murmur of conversation as people started for the door. 

“Well, Frank, I wonder if this message will amount to more than that hoax we had last month,” said a Wizard’s voice off to my left.

“At least Dumbledore believes this one is genuine…” replied Alice’s husband.

“I was sorry Albus wasn’t here today,” said Molly. “I especially wanted him to try this punch. He’s quite fond of anything with lemon or lime in it, you know.”

“Well, I’m glad that you and Arthur were able to come!” said Lily by the door. “And that you brought your adorable little twins! I’ve been hoping for a chance to see them! And that really was a lovely punch. Was that the recipe from the last Witch Weekly?” 

I saw Remus getting to his feet and rose to meet him. Too bad I hadn’t apparated here after all instead of bringing my bike. I hadn’t gotten the chance for a good chat with Remus in close to a month. Not since I’d gone to spend some time with him during the last full moon. 

James’s hand caught my sleeve. “Wait! Time is growing short. Sirius, Peter, Remus, stay a moment…”

“All right, James,” Remus nodded, blue eyes intent on his old friend. “What is it?” 

Beyond him, Lily was heading for the refreshment desk. “Alice, wait! You forgot your biscuit plate…”

Peter glanced from James to where Lily was levitating up empty dishes and punch glasses. “James,” he asked. “Does this mean that the meeting is really all over then?”

“Yeah, why?” James raised his eyebrow.

“Well,” Peter said, leaping to his feet. “I skipped lunch…” He made a quick dash and grabbed the single waiting brownie from its tray and a huge fistful of crisps from their bowl before Lily levitated the dishes out through the open doorway.

“Wouldn’t know it to look at him, would you?” James said as an aside to me, before dropping into Peter’s spot on the couch. 

Shrugging, I looked from Peter’s plump figure to Remus’s thin one. His face was incredibly tired and pale as he gestured his huge wing-backed chair over from the corner into a position facing James and me. Was it the approaching time of moon-madness that was affecting him? Or something more? 

“Remus,” I said, leaning toward him “I didn’t get a chance to ask you if you’ve heard anything yet about that teaching post you were hoping for?”

He shook his head and sank into the chair. “Didn’t work out.” he said, keeping his voice neutral. “Some problems with the type of schedule they wanted me to maintain there. But there’s a tutoring post I’m up for. Only part time, but it’s a start. I’ll have to head back North straightaway after the meeting to talk to the parents.”

Nobody in that room but James, Peter and I would have known there was any more story in his words than the usual struggle to establish oneself during those early years out of school. For my old friend, though, the struggle was anything but usual. 

It seemed so unfair. Remus could name the direction in which all his dreams led. He knew he wanted to spend his time among books both studying and teaching. Me, I’d worked at one thing and another, but was still searching for some bigger purpose to my life besides getting along from day to day and not following in my parents’ footsteps. Yet, I was the one with the resources to create opportunities for myself. Travel, if I wanted, though there was no special place calling me to come visit it. Use a few old connections to get a post at the Ministry, though I couldn’t see myself behind a desk, dictating reports to a scribing quill all day. Start a shop, though I had no real interest in business, only in the bikes I was planning to sell. Any of them was a better choice than just living like a rich kid off the galleons I’d inherited from my Uncle Alphard. Time fillers. More or less pointless, really. None of them eased the restlessness that had followed me round through the years since I left school. And meanwhile, there was my friend, Remus getting blocked at every turn…

“Here’s to your getting that post!” I said. “Send an owl straight off and let me know, will you?” I raised my untouched glass of splash to him. Took a slow sip. 

No matter how much I liked Lily, no matter how much she believed what she said, I couldn’t help thinking that she was only skimming the surface of what was wrong with our Wizarding world. Otherwise life would have been a lot kinder to my friend Remus.   
Those of us in the Order of the Phoenix were doing a good thing, opposing Voldemort and trying to keep things fair for people with Muggle blood like Lily’s, or my Cousin Nymphadora Tonks. But how much different were we, really, than some of his snobby followers? How many of the same people who came and went from these meetings and hated what the Dark Lord stood for, would turn Remus away if they learned that he was a werewolf? 

“I hated chasing everybody out like that,” James said, his gaze following mine around the slowly emptying room. “But we’ve got to set some plans in motion here, and we’re not really sure who, in this crowd we can trust right now. What we were talking about before you came-” he turned to me. “Was that we’ve been contacted by a Voldemort insider who has information for us.”

“Is this insider naming names?” I asked as Remus gestured another chair forward for Peter as he strolled back to us, nibbling down a parade of crisps one after the other. 

“If so, he or she hasn’t told us theirs yet, or even whether we’re dealing with a Witch or a Wizard,” said James. “I don’t know what they’ll offer us, if anything at all. This person might just be wanting to check us out, see whether they like us better than they like the Death-Eaters. They want to meet in an out of the way spot. Named a pub over on the East End of London. Moody’s already setting up lookouts round the area. You might not have been raised in their world, Sirius, or have any close Muggle connections, but you’d probably pass as a Muggle better than most of us here. At least on casual inspection. So, you’ve been voted to be our contact.”

“Me? Pass as a Muggle?” Despite the seriousness of the situation, I couldn’t quite bite back a laugh. “James, you know as well as I do that except for what I learned back at school in Muggle studies or from jaunting round London with you, I know almost nothing! If that final exam had lasted more than an hour, I’d have failed it completely! I forgot their buses only stop at certain places, no matter if you have a wand raised to summon them or not! Then I didn’t remember how to count their money into the little slurping box next to the driver!”

“But,” said James. “Lily says you’d get a long ways just by showing up on that!” He pointed out the window to where my motorbike waited patiently beside the rose bush.

“Lily said that?” I felt a grin spread across my face. “She told me my bike was silly!” 

James grinned back. “Did you get the motor sound spell into it that you wanted?”

“Yeah. It changes pitches when I slow down or speed up. It sounds really cool.”

“Great!” said James. “I’ll get to hear it in action when you ride me pillion on your bike with you! You know, what with her growing up in a Muggle family, Lily knows all about the clothing magazines that show what people are wearing in Muggle London these days. She’s been out and about all morning getting clothes and stuff for us to wear so we’ll fit right in.”

Peter was frowning. “James, I thought that I was going to be the one who’d be getting to go along with Sirius.”

“You’d’ve been, if she’d found something in your size!” James levitated the last crisp out of Peter’s plump hand and popped it into his own mouth. 

“Here you go, Sirius.” Lily stepped into the study, holding out a large brown paper parcel tied up with red string. She smiled at me. “Open it. See what you think.”

I reached for the package, then paused. 

“Go ahead.” Her bright green eyes sparkled. “It won’t bite.”

“Promise?” I began undoing the string. “I seem to remember something about a certain present I got last Christmas…”

“That one,” She gave me a pained look. “Was from James!” 

“This is beautiful!” I exclaimed as the paper crinkled and dropped away from a shiny black leather jacket. It was heavy in my hands and buttery smooth as I held it up to a circle of applause from the scatter of people still in the doorway.

“I’ve got one too!” James said proudly. “In the front hall closet. Lily wouldn’t let me wear it to the meeting for fear of ruining your surprise.”

“Thanks, Lily,” A lump was rising in my throat as I rose to give her a quick embrace.  
She had seemed so annoyed with me earlier, but now, here she was, my dear friend, smiling with delight at my reaction to the gift. 

“There’s a pair of jeans for each of you and new tee-shirts as well! Green and orange rugbies like in the note.” There was the quick pressure of her returning hug. “You might want to try them on now so I can tell whether they need stretching or shrinking charms done on them.”

“I’ll just finish bringing Sirius up to speed on that note first,” said James, gesturing me back down to the couch beside him. “We’ve got a bit of time, yet. We don’t have to leave tonight until…”

“Wait! Are you telling me-” I looked from Lily to James “That this meeting is supposed to be tonight?”

“Why? Is there a problem?” Peter, his brow furrowed, looked up at me from his last bit of brownie.

“Yeah! There is! I’m supposed to meet someone…” I stopped.

“Meet who?” Peter’s bright, demanding gaze was in sharp contrast with the smear of chocolate on his chin. “Sirius!” he exclaimed. “What could be more important than-?”

“Not so loud!” Remus reached up to grasp Peter’s arm. “There’s no reason to go broadcasting Sirius’s private life to the Order at large…” 

“Sorry! Sorry!” Peter’s voice was rising in an agitated squeak. “It’s just that, well, with all this talk of a spy in the Order, I can’t help wondering how Sirius could think about taking off anywhere without telling us what he was up to. I mean, couldn’t that look rather suspicious?” 

“Quiet!” snapped James as two Witches paused in the doorway to look back at us. 

Remus turned to me. “Is it the man with the space to let for you to start your shop?”

“No.” I said. “That was this afternoon. Nice spot though, just off from Diagon Alley. The place is a little small for displaying motorbikes though, so nothing’s been decided yet. Thanks for asking.”

“Well, come on Sirius, who is it then?” Peter cut in. “And why is it such a deep dark secret, anyway?” 

“Because it’s none of your bleeding business, that’s why!” I snapped, then looked round at James, Lily and Remus. “Sorry. I never meant this to become such a huge deal, but I’d already planned to…” 

I stopped. Swallowed down the rest of my words.

I couldn’t tell them. 

Not here. Not now. 

Not with Peter leaning toward me, demanding explanations. 

Not with several curious eyes still gazing at me from the door.

Not when, if the rumour was true, someone in this room might be reporting to   
Voldemort and his Death-Eaters.

Not when I didn’t know how long it took, now that the Order meeting was over, for the confidentiality spell to wear off the place. 

Not when my guts had been twisting themselves into new knots of confusion all day long, whenever I looked ahead to this evening’s meeting. Was it apprehension I was feeling? Or eagerness? I still didn’t know, even though I’d read the note so often in the past hours that I didn’t need to pull it out of my pocket to know what it said.

Dear Siri,   
Never thought the day would come I’d say you were right when you said dark arts are sneaky, cowardly things. You told me they make the people who use them hungry for more and more power!   
Well, now that day’s arrived, and I’m saying it.   
You were right. Over the last months, I’ve seen that hunger devour respect for tradition, swallow up pride and gorge itself on loyalty. The guy we used to argue about- (I almost hate to speak- or write- his name) -that one our Mother was so fascinated with, has turned all those things I believed in, into a sham by what he is doing. Not only to those who oppose him, but to those who even dare to question his plans or his wishes.  
I have watched his lust for power consume all the ideals he said would unite our world, until now there is nothing left for me but the echo of empty promises and a lot of dangerous questions. I would talk to our family about them, or the people who were at school with me that I once considered my friends, but now I think it would be too risky. I don’t know anymore who among them I can trust. And besides, I don’t know if I could stomach their answers.  
I’m probably already in too far over my head to back away from what this has become. But I’m convinced it’s what I must attempt to do. I have some ideas that might, just might, undo some of the damage that’s been done in our community.   
Siri, if you remember all we were to each other when we were small, meet me. Someplace public, so it doesn’t look like we’re hiding anything. Someplace loud enough to make it hard to eavesdrop. Quiet enough so that we can talk. Leaky Cauldron’s always good. Six o’clock. Give me an hour. Maybe then I can sort it all out, decide what I should do next.   
Regs

He hadn’t called me Siri in years. Wouldn’t let me call him Regs either, once I’d come home from my first year in Gryffindor House. Said it wasn’t a dignified enough way to address the future head of the House of Black, now that I’d disgraced the family. 

Was this really a plea for help? Or a ploy to gain information about the Order? 

Could it be a trap?

It was such a long time since we were close. Since we’d done more than look at each other passing in the halls at school. I didn’t know him any more.

I could still see the glee in his face when he said anyone who hurt our family deserved to be banished. 

Just as clear was the image of Regs looking up the front hall stairs at me, his dark eyes full of indecision as I begged him not to stay with our parents in Grimmauld Place but to come away with me to Diagon Alley... 

What is the truth of this, Regs? 

And I found the words in my head mirrored those on the page. If you remember all that we were to each other when we were small, meet me!

I’d stared down at the hasty scrawl that was in such contrast to my brother’s usually even script and made my decision that I would be there to meet him at the Leaky Cauldron. But how could I explain the wordless tug of eagerness, excitement, fear and foreboding that had lain waiting and watchful in my gut all day, or the pull of the two names on that page? 

Siri… 

Regs…

“Give it a rest, Peter!” To my surprise it was Remus’s stage-whisper that pulled Peter’s gaze away from me. “Come on! You remember that look, don’t you? He’s going to meet a girl!” 

“Oh, oops, right! Er… sorry, Sirius!” stammered Peter, his face growing red. “Anyone I know?” 

“Like he’d tell the whole Order here!” exclaimed James, flashing me a big grin, then leaning in close. “By the way, Sirius, is it anybody I know? Like Pony-Tail, maybe?”

“James, really! What a thing to ask! It’s none of our business after all!” said Lily. “And, by the way, who, exactly, is Pony-Tail?”

He turned to look up at her. “A girl…” 

“Well, obviously, a girl.” She folded her arms across her chest. Tapped her foot. Gave him her green-eyed glare. Still, with having just got a dose of it in the sitting room across the hall, I could tell it wasn’t quite genuine.

But it was creating the desired effect. Amid chuckles and a few backward curious glances, the last few Witches and Wizards drifted out through the doorway.

“Anyway,” James turned to me and took up the discussion as though it had never been interrupted. “Sorry for springing all this on you without checking first. Everything’s come up so fast… I just figured you’d want to be in on it…”

“What time does this person want to meet?” I interrupted him.

“Nine. Wanted a pair of us, wearing green and orange rugby shirts so they could identify us.” 

“What are rugby shirts?” asked Peter.

The same question had flitted through my mind, but had given way to a more important one. 

“Nine, you say?” I looked at James to make certain I had it right. Could I make it by then? I narrowed my eyes, studied the possibility. Regs at six. An hour would be seven. Later if the talk between us got to flowing. Seven thirty or a few minutes after… Allow time to apperate him off to my flat if he needed to lay low while he decided what he wanted to do. After all, if he was fed up enough with Voldemort to seek my advice, he’d get a pretty thin welcome back in Grimmauld Place. A few minutes to get him settled, show him where I kept food, tea and butter beer… 

James was nodding. “Yeah, that’s right. Nine.” 

“Okay,” I told him. “Let’s go for it. Tell me about this pub then. Where is it? If I leave my bike here and apperate back to meet you by ten to eight or so, would we be able to make it there on time?”


	4. The Digs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anticipation... announcements... escape...

The Digs

 

“No, James, it’s not like a broomstick!” I called over my shoulder, above the rumbling sound of the motorbike. “Don’t counter-balance me! Lean in again, same way I am. That’s right! Hang on tight, man! There comes another car round that corner! Merlin’s beard, that was close! How does anyone begin to make sense of this traffic?”

I couldn’t hear if he answered, but felt his grasp tighten around me as we swung wide to avoid an on-coming double decker bus with glaring bright headlight eyes and swept onto an almost deserted side street lined with large, boxlike buildings, mostly holding shops that were already closed up for the night. At the middle of the block, we coasted through the dazzle of a large sign that flashed purple, green, then orange by turns. 

How did Muggles sort out all this glare to negotiate all that traffic? 

Beneath the sign was a battered wooden door that reflected the changing colour of the words. The Digs said the purple flash. Alonzo’s Fine Beers and Ales said the green. Spirits served here, proclaimed the orange. 

“Spirits served here?” I shouted to James as I spelled down the motor sound a little and slowed the bike. “You sure this is a Muggle place?”

“Thought so, according to the message!” he said in my ear. “I’m just following what it said in the parchment. Looks like there’s a spot for your bike round the side there.”

A narrow alley held probably a dozen bikes of different shapes and sizes. Any other time I’d’ve been drawn over for a long look. Not tonight. There was the weight of too much business on my mind and too much confusion around my heart since leaving the Leaky Cauldron a little less than an hour ago.

He hadn’t come.

Six fifteen. No problem. Could’ve lost track of time. Been delayed. Was talking to someone, couldn’t break free. I ordered a dish of bean and bacon soup. Stirred it round and round, watching the steam rise while I waited. 

Six thirty. Blast it, he’d chickened out, changed his mind, remembered I’d been kicked out of the family. I made myself eat some of the tepid soup. Told myself I’d need the energy for later even though the stuff, far as I could tell, had no flavor to it. 

Quarter to seven. Had he had an accident?. Gotten lost? Forgot where he said he’d meet me? I pushed the bowl aside. Shifted the position of my chair. Watched the door. 

Seven o’clock. What if it was me who’d mixed up the hour? Seven, not six? I pulled the bowl back to me. Ate a bite, then two, then three, of the congealed liquid. A little longer, a little longer. He was going to show up any moment now, all in a rush and bubbling over with excuses, explanations and apologies. That was okay. I still had some time to talk. 

He was going to be here. He’d said so… he’d said…

It wasn’t the first time Regs had said one thing and done another. He’d once said he would keep the secret of my sneaking out of the house and then told our Father how I did it. But we’d been kids then, and he’d thought he was acting for my good… 

Seven fifteen. If only I knew how to reach him. 

Seven thirty. I hated to think something could have happened to him. Hated to think he’d stood me up. Hated to leave not knowing. 

Twenty minutes to eight. James would be waiting for me in his orange and green striped rugby shirt and leather jacket… 

Ten minutes to eight. Lily would be waiting to check our shirt sizes and wish us luck. 

Five to eight. My bike would be waiting beside the rosebush, all ready to speed James and me to another place to wait… 

Two minutes to eight. 

I walked out of the Leaky Cauldron without looking back, around the corner into the alley where I apparated back to the Potters’ house. 

Now it was five to nine. There was no time to think about Regs, be annoyed with him, worry over him. I secured my bike next to the lamp post at the head of the alley outside The Digs, taking only long enough to note how it was positioned among the other bikes. 

“Dodgey looking place, isn’t it?” James glanced sidelong at me as we pushed open the front door and stepped into swirling blue light, gold light, white light and red.

“Wow, James, look at this place!” I leaned close to his ear, as I squinted up at the spell-bright flashes overhead. “With all the streaking lights, doesn’t it look like a whole class of wizards studying charms for their O W L exams? Or having dueling practice?” 

James laughed as his hand grasped my elbow and tugged me forward. “Let’s get ourselves a seat.” I followed him as the dazzle began reshaping itself into a line of booths, a scatter of tables, a small area cleared for dancing and a long bar at the far side. 

Didn’t look so different from some of the pubs along Diagon Alley, except for those explosive bright lights and the lack of a fireplace glowing warm and golden in the corner. Had I ever seen a Muggle place with a good, cozy fire in it rather than that excel-something we’d learned about in school? Hadn’t really been in enough of them to be sure. Something to ask Lily sometime… 

The place was crowded with talking, laughing people. Through the shifting colours, most of them looked to be about James’s and my age. Was there anyone here I knew from school? Recognized from Diagon Alley? Anybody who looked a little out of place here- aside from James or me anyway? But then, we really didn’t look different than anyone else here, did we? No. Best as I could tell, we didn’t. No reason beyond apprehension to believe otherwise. Lily would have done her job well. I studied James as we walked toward a booth on the side of the room away from the entryway, but offering a good view of the door. “You’re right about this being a dodgy looking place,” I told him. “You look like you fit in just fine!”

“Yeah, you too.” He grinned as he gave me a quick glance up and down “But then, Sirius, I always thought you looked a bit dodgy yourself. You could pass as a regular”

“That was the plan, wasn’t it?” I asked as we slid into the booth and sat, facing each other, watching the people at nearby tables or lining up at the bar. The music was loud. It seemed to come from a large, glowing box in the far corner. A girl with her hair half in orange and half lavender was feeding something to the box. It managed to sing on even through its own coughing and gulping. I nodded in her direction. “My Cousin Tonks would love to come here. Lots of ideas for her transformations.”

James leaned across the table to make himself heard. “You’ll have to bring her when she’s a bit older. There’s a guy over there with his hair all sticking up in spikes. Looks like it’s been coated with bubo tuber pus, doesn’t it? By the way, Sirius, there’s something I wanted to ask you-”

“Wait, here’s the barmaid…” I cut him off as a tall girl with blonde hair piled high on her head and about ten long, shiny earrings dangling from each earlobe approached our table with an empty tray in her hands. 

She divided a smile between us. Made her voice carry over the music without seeming to shout. “Hello, loves! I’m Bronwyn! Welcome to The Digs. I’ll be taking your orders tonight!”

This wouldn’t be the contact would it? Already? No. Of course not. Not so quick as this when unseen eyes might still be examining the newcomers to the room. It wouldn’t come in any manner so obvious as a server who would be noticed if she stayed too long to chat at one table. Still, I waited a moment, just in case. “A butter beer each for my friend here and me.” I said at last as I gestured from James to myself.

She gave a quick nod before she spun lightly in the direction she had come, her body swaying in rhythm with the booming pulse, pulse, pulse of the music. 

I turned back to James. “I wanted to ask you before, if this person, whoever he or she is, is supposed to know us by the colours of our shirts, or what? How are we supposed to recognize them?”

“It was in the note. I should’ve brought it for you to see once it was decided you’d be one of the contacts, but when it arrived, Allastor thought it should go straightaway to Albus for his opinion. Anyway, the person who wrote it said that they’re supposed to be wearing red and when they come over, they’ll drop a line, a password…” He didn’t tell me what it was, but stopped abruptly and sat back as Bronwyn returned with two tall glasses of amber liquid on her tray. She gave us each another smile as she set them between us. No, she was definitely not the contact, then. She wore blue so bright it was almost blazing. 

Picking up my beer, I watched her weave away through the tables and the swirling lights. Looked past James’s left shoulder at the door as a couple of guys came through it. I studied the way they shook off the flash and dazzle of the lights as if they barely noticed it, before they broke into a matched set of grins and hurried toward a nearby table where two girls sat waiting. None of them wore red.

I felt the weight of James’s gaze resting on me before I turned back to him. He was leaning toward me, his elbows on the table top. “Okay, Sirius. You’ve been stalling all the way from my house. How’d that little meeting of yours go?” 

“It didn’t happen,” I said.

“I kind of figured that by the way you looked when you walked in my front door. Sorry she stood you up, mate.”

“It wasn’t really a girl, James. It was Regs.”

James’s eyes widened. “Your brother? You were meeting Regulus?”

“Yeah! Stupid me, right?” The fist that had been curled round my insides since I’d heard the door of the Leaky Cauldron clunk shut behind me, gave a good, hard squeeze. Though my throat had gone tight enough to strangle over each word, they poured out in a tumble of concern, pain, confusion, and bitterness. “I thought he was serious! That he’d really be there! I waited! Oh, man, James, I waited nearly two hours for him! He never showed!”

I curled my hand tighter round the glass of cold amber liquid. Stared down into the bubbles. “Sorry, James. Don’t know why I expected different… but there was a time when the two of us were, well, you know, close…” I raised the glass. Took a rapid swallow and lost my words in a series of coughs. “Bloody hell! This isn’t butter beer!”

James didn’t laugh at my sputtering, but gazed at me with serious eyes before giving me a small, wry smile. “Well now I guess we know this is a Muggle place,” he said.

I gathered my breath and composure. Made a careful business of mopping up every drop of the bitter beer that had splashed across the table. Then, drawing a long breath, I led the subject away from my brother. “So what was up with Lily this afternoon?” 

“Lily?” James sat in silence for a moment, then allowed the subject to be lead. He looked at me over his glass. Raised it, took a careful sniff, made a face and set it down on the scuffed table top. Waited for me to elaborate. 

“You know, your wife?” I asked. “That green-eyed girl you used to call Luscious Lily when we were back in school?”

That got a real smile out of him. “Remember that, do you?”

“Yeah, just like you remembered Pony Tail! Good thing you brought the subject back to business this afternoon before any more came out about her!”

James raised his eyebrows. “Haven’t seen her since you left Hogwarts then?”

“Little Hessia Nightingale? James, last time I saw her, she was fifteen years old! She was two years younger than we were!”

“That didn’t stop you tugging on that pony-tail every time you saw her, did it? Guess that means you haven’t tried to look her up since she left school?”

“No, I haven’t. Maybe I will after I get my shop set up. But even if she hasn’t already hooked up with somebody else, she’s probably changed so much I wouldn’t even know her! Anyway, come on. Tell old Uncle Sirius, is Lily all right? She looked exhausted”

A flush was creeping up James’s face. “Yeah, she’s fine. Actually, she’s more than all right.”

“Well?”

“Sirius… we’re… well…” James’s eyes sparkled. The flush deepened and a huge white grin flashed in the middle of it. “Next summer… next July… we’re… well… we’re having a baby! I’m going to be a father!” 

“James!” I felt a smile stretching across my face, even as a series of images flashed through my mind. The skinny tousle-haired eleven year old kid I’d tramped with round Diagon Alley. The gawky Fifth Year who talked bravely to me about Luscious Lily Evans, then fell into stutters, stammers and every shade of red known to artists whenever he set eyes on her. The proud, beaming man I’d stood beside as he watched her come down the aisle toward him at his wedding. James. After all these years, still my friend James! He was going to be a father! “That’s great! That’s amazing!”

“Yeah!” the smile held a moment, then faded, along with the flush. His eyes were weary, almost sad. “Only wish we were living in different times. I’m starting to think that things are going to get quite a lot worse before they get better. I’m not sure it’s a happy time to bring a kid into the Wizarding World.”

“You’re really worried, aren’t you, James? Is it because he… You Know Who… is getting up to something new?” I pulled the glass toward me, then thought better of it and pushed it aside. “Maybe something that came up in the meeting before I got there?”

“No. It wasn’t anything at the meeting,” said James. “Nothing in particular anyway. Just something that’s been on my mind lately. A heavy feeling in the air. Maybe it’s Voldemort’s nasty influence seeping through and putting a cold cloud over everything. But, Sirius, have you noticed how much more talk of dark Magic there is now than there used to be?”

“More than before we went to school, do you mean? Or since we finished?” I asked.

“Both.” James’s eyebrows raised at the question. “Why? Does that make a difference?”

“Well, yeah. It could. Because I may not be the best person to ask. Lily says I have a blind spot where Voldemort and his followers are concerned, since I knew so many of them growing up.”

James cupped his chin in his hand. “You think she’s right?”

I considered. “Yeah, probably. Dark arts were a fairly routine part of the talk around my house. All those glorious old traditions that gave our family its wealth and power. Dead tedious load of rot it was, too. All caught up with proper behaviour and upholding our noble position in Wizarding society forever and ever and blah, blah, blah…”

James gave me a brief grin, then made a gagging sound.

“Yeah, right!” I nodded agreement, returning a small smile of my own before I went on. “Everything was about maintaining that. The dark arts supposedly assured our family of being respected. House Elves waiting on us at home, goblins bowing and scraping when we had business at Gringots Bank. Waiters rushing to prepare us the best tables at any restaurant we went to in Diagon Alley. But I think I understand what you mean about that cold cloud, because those dark arts never seemed to make my parents into particularly happy people. They were like prisoners of the need to keep their power. I didn’t want to be held in like that, so I tried not to listen to a lot of what they said. Maybe if I had, I could give you a real answer to your question. Maybe I’d know what to believe about all the rumours we’ve been hearing lately.”

James nodded. “Guess we’re all trying to figure out that sort of thing, mate. Oh, nothing more for us just yet, all right?” All of the earlier sparkle had gone from his eyes. He waved Bronwyn away as she, her tray and her swinging earrings appeared at his elbow. He leaned close across the table. “I mean, when I first joined the Order, it was half a lark. All in a good cause, you know, but… Well, wandering round Diagon Alley picking up bits and pieces of information didn’t feel so different than prowling round Hogwarts after lights out. Or that night when we sneaked down to the hallway outside McGonagall’s office door under the invisibility cloak with those cups of tea leaves and tried to divine the answers to her Transfiguration Exam. Remember that?”

“Yeah, I do!” I laughed, though it did little to ease the restless knot still riding low in my gut. “When I joined, it was a way of saying I stood with Tonks against my family’s snobby, outdated ideas. I never realized, growing up, how hard they must’ve been on Cousin Andromeda for marrying outside the select pureblood circle of Wizarding Society. But it was all stinging words as far as I could tell then. Vicious, hurtful snubs, needlessly cruel, but not dangerous to anything except one’s precious reputation. Or, at very worst, one’s power and position within the Ministry of Magic.” 

I shook my head, wished I had something to do with my hands. “Now, with all these rumours… the talk of disappearances, the chance we have a spy in the Order… I’m not sure what to believe. Or what I need to be doing. Being disgusted, that’s easy. I’ve had years of practice with that. But are we supposed to be scared now as well? I don’t know if we’re all just getting edgy and suspicious or if you’re right and there is more dark activity going on than there used to be. It makes me wonder how far that lot of Voldemort’s will go to get power. Lily told me this afternoon I should ask myself what my Mother would do…” 

“Scary thought,” James said as he pulled a folded stack of strange looking papers from his pocket and laid them on the table by our two amber filled glasses. I recognized the Muggle currency Lily had gotten for him and resisted the urge to lean forward for a closer look in case the barmaid was still watching us. 

“Yeah, real scary,” I agreed, taking a deep swallow from my glass, grimacing and then setting it down between us again. “I don’t really know what she’s capable of. I’d want to say even she has her limits. But that’s that blind spot talking, I think. What was it that got you thinking how things may be changing?” 

“Well,” James said after a moment. “It was how I began noticing how people talked about Lily. Or treated her. There were kids we knew at Hogwarts that started snubbing her a couple of years after we finished school. Because she was Muggle-born. At first it was only a rude little comment here and there when they’d see us together. Not often. Not from that many people. I still don’t think most people feel that way, but those who did began getting bolder and nastier. Said stuff about what should be done with Wizards who weakened the Magical force by mixing their blood with…” An angry flush rose in his cheeks and his eyes squeezed shut as if the memory hurt. “No way. I’m not going to repeat what a couple of them said, like they didn’t think, or just didn’t care, that she was standing right there, hearing every word of it. Stuff we’d never have heard said out loud on the street a few years ago. Let’s just say it was bad enough to get me thinking…”

James’s eyes became fond and wistful for a moment. “You know, my parents never talked that way about anybody, so I always half thought at school that tossing insults back and forth was something we’d naturally grow out of, like last year’s robes. That it would get boring once we were fully qualified Wizards with more interesting things to do. Sounds kind of daft, looking back, doesn’t it? But, you know, I probably spent my first couple of years out of school wondering when some of those people would finally grow up. Then- I’m not sure when it happened- I realized that they actually were grown up. They were fully qualified Witches and Wizards, still talking that way. Only now they were equipped with power to put more behind their words than spells for sprouting cauliflowers out your ears, splatting you down face first in a mud puddle or hitting you with a jelly-legs jinx… ”

“Guess we’re both learning to see round a few blind spots,” I said, nodding. I could’ve told him the day we started Hogwarts that being an adult didn’t have anything at all to do with leaving attitudes like that behind. 

I stared at James across the scuffed surface of the table. We’d left his place amid a flurry of activity and apprehension, but, even then, there had been a certain sense of adventure fueling us as we roared off down the road. That was gone now and I saw a reflection of my own confused weariness in his eyes. 

We both had so much to learn! Was it blind spots we had? Or were we starting to see our own lack of experience? Watching the last of our childhood innocence fading? 

How was it I could feel both centuries younger and older than the laughing couple sliding into the booth behind James? James, my old childhood friend, who would soon be fathering a new life into the world. Would our work for the Order be able to protect the happy innocence of that little unborn child? 

Merlin’s Beard, I hoped so! 

I picked up my amber filled glass, raised it to him. “Here’s to us making a world for your baby where people think more like your parents and less like mine!” 

“To that kinder, brighter, safer world,” nodded James. “And to your soon to be Godson or Daughter!” 

“My…? My Godchild!” Before I could do more than feel the grin of delight stretching my face, he picked up his glass and clinked it against mine. Their rims chimed a clear, bright sound as we raised them to each other and drank the bitter Muggle beer.

Over his shoulder, off to my right, the door opened again.

Two Wizards walked in. 

It wasn’t their clothes that gave them away. Didn’t know who they were right off, either. Only recognized the way their heads raised as mine had done, their gazes caught and dazzled by the lights flashing spell-bright overhead. 

This could be it then! This meeting might really be about to happen! Were they wearing red? Couldn’t tell as the red flash, blue flash, gold flash disguised the colours of their clothes. Then the light spilled glaring white over one head of shining pale hair and the other one, dark and greasy. Almost before I saw their faces, I knew them.

James must have seen something change in my face. “What is it?”

“Don’t look round.” I said, resisting the urge to slam down my glass and leap to my feet. “It’s Malfoy and Snape.” 

“No way,” said James. “It wouldn’t be one of them we’re meeting.”

“No.” I agreed. “Either we’ve been set up by whoever it was who wanted us to come here, or someone tipped off that lot that one of their own was meeting us and they want to find out who it is and what they were after…”

“Well, for our own sake,” said James. “And that of the person in red, in case he or she is on the level, we’d better make a point of adjourning this little meeting. Before we get caught or before they show up and walk into a trap!” 

No need to say more. We set down our glasses and slid out of the booth. James pushed Lily’s pile of numbered papers into the middle of the table as we turned away,   
then wove our way toward the door, through tables, chairs and knots of people. Likely it was a futile gesture, but as I moved, I closed my jacket over the telltale orange and green rugby shirt, lest it gave me away before my face did. I fumbled with its odd, toothy fastening strip, then gave up and touching the wand in my pocket instead, I muttered a stealthy “adhero!” Beside me, James was closing his jacket too- with fingers only, no wand. It would only be moments before the disguising dazzle faded from Snape’s and Malfoy’s eyes and our faces would be revealed as clear as theirs had been to us. But every thought, every action seemed to be slowing, taking on sharp detail. Oddly, there was time for me to think that Lily must have taught James how to work that fastening, and someday it would be helpful to have someone show me how to do things like that, too. Then Bronwyn and her tray full of glasses glided into our path.

The knot in my gut twisted. Was her arrival an accident, or was she as much a part of this as Snape, Malfoy, James or I?

“Something wrong, love?” The four amber filled glasses on her tray tinkled against each other as she shifted it to one arm and touched James’s sleeve with her free hand. “To have you leaving so soon?” 

“Someone I’d rather not meet just came in,” said James, not missing a beat as he stepped around her and gestured toward the door. “Especially not in a crowd. Not in a place with lots of breakables.” 

“Money’s on the table,” I added as she glanced from him, to me and then to the booth where we’d been sitting. “Keep the change.”

Her eyes widened. “All that? Say, you want me to distract them for you?”

Before either of us could answer, she was slipping, fluid as water between the tables. I glanced to where Malfoy was shaking his head to clear it and stepping forward into the crowded room with Snape half a step behind.

“Here we go! Got your order!” Bronwyn tossed the loud and cheerful words ahead of her across the room toward several clusters of people standing in front of the large glowing music box in the corner. “’cept I’m sorry to say we’re all out of the dark ale, so you’ll need to- Oh, no! Oh, Sir! Excuse me!” 

She let out a cry of dismay as she swung round the closest table to the door, nearly colliding with Malfoy. The tray skimmed his elbow. Glasses danced in mid-air for an instant as the tray began to tilt, to tip, to slide, out from beneath them. Bronwyn managed to snatch one as the rest tumbled toward the floor. 

At my shoulder, James was moving faster. By instinct, Malfoy turned away from us, his gaze following the mess sailing past his chest. Motionless, he watched it hit the floor with a tinkle of glass and a splatter of ale.

“Oh, Sir! I’m so horribly, dreadfully sorry! Did I spill anything on you?” Bronwyn fluttered apologetically in front of him. “Such a clumsy thing to do!” 

Snape’s dark eyes swept up, over her head. No dazzled look in them now. I saw them widen in recognition.

“Out of my way, foolish girl!” he exclaimed, snatching at her arm.

But she bobbed away, just beyond his grasp, babbling and brushing at the front of Malfoy’s blue silk shirt. “Wasn’t paying near enough attention to what I was doing, was I, love? Such a careless, silly thing for me to’ve done! You sure I didn’t get any of it on you, now, love?”

Lucius didn’t answer, just grabbed her shoulder to swing her out of his path. The remaining glass of ale in her hand came up, quick and on target. In one smooth motion, she hurled an amber spray of liquid into his face, then jerked away from him. Coughing and grimacing, Malfoy staggered sideways into Snape as Bronwyn dived into the cover of the crowded dance floor and disappeared amid the pulsing lights. 

It only took the two of them a moment to recover. But James and I were already moving past them, our feet almost flying the last several steps toward the entryway.   
The cool night air washed over us as James pulled the door open. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that Malfoy had disentangled himself from Snape and the two of them were whirling round in our direction before the door swung shut, blocking the view.

“Come on, Sirius, run!” shouted James, leaping out into the green, purple, orange flooded night.

No need to tell me twice!

There was the loud clatter of wood as the door swung wide behind us and crashed into the wall. “No, you idiot!” I heard Snape fifteen yards behind me. “Not your wand! Orders were to keep them out of sight!”

“As if you’d think anyone would notice amid all that flash and noise!” a furious Malfoy shouted as two sets of pounding footsteps echoed along the sidewalk behind us. “Anyway, the Ministry can just go ahead and modify all those Muggles’ memories…”

Almost to the end of the block now. Chasing our shadows across the changing colours on the sidewalk. Round the corner. Into the dimness of the alley. Running as the footsteps echoed closer behind us. Searching among the bikes along the side of the building. Which one? Which one? 

Red light washed the cobblestones ahead of me, red as blood. The last glow from the pub? The flash of a spell? I risked a glance over my shoulder. Malfoy had sprinted ahead of Snape. His pale hair glimmered in the light streaming from the tip of his raised wand. James knocked me sideways as the spell shot by between us, scoring a dark, smoking line on the bricks at shoulder height. “They’re gaining on us!” he cried, grasping my arm and pulling me upright as I stumbled.

“Not for long they aren’t!” I shouted. My hand was already slipping into my pocket. Bringing out my own rowan wood wand. Drawing an arc with it in the air, I pointed toward the lamp-post, released the tether and shouted. “Aseo my motorbike!”

Soundless, it separated itself from the others lining the alley and leaped toward us. Now it was me snatching at James’ arm, pulling him forward as I swung myself aboard the leather seat. For an instant I felt the drag of his weight and then he was surging up behind me, his arms circling my waist, vice-tight as we sped up. Malfoy and Snape fell back a step as we swept past almost on their toes.

Another red spell streaked by, brushing, feather light, at the sleeve of my jacket before vanishing into the darkness ahead of me. There was a clatter and a curse and another spell speeding past, far to my left this time. Then we were rounding the corner, skimming the smooth surface of the ground. The sign washed its colours across the sidewalk and spilled them into the empty street. 

“Silencio!” I shouted. The motor’s roar was swallowed up in its own echo, even as I added the charm to reflect the lights around us and create a bubble of invisibility that, at night, especially, was almost as good as a cloak. 

In the ringing stillness, I heard Snape’s shouts fading “Wait, Lucius, you fool! I told you there must be no use of a wand! Let them go for now!” 

Then we were lifting, taking to the sky in a soaring burst of speed. The night wind whipped in our hair, in our eyes, driving away any talk, any thoughts except those of getting ourselves home.

“They knew!” James exclaimed in a breathless voice, even as we touched down in the Potters’ welcoming side garden. “Oh, man, Sirius, they knew! That lot wasn’t running around in Muggle clothes for the fun of it!”

“You got that right!” I said, as we scrambled off the bike and I tethered it beside the rosebush with a wand that I realized was shaking in my hand. “And those weren’t jelly-legs jinxes Lucius was shooting at us either. Bloody hell, James! I thought that first one as we rode out of the alley was the cruciatus!”

“I don’t just think so! I know it was! I heard it!” The breathlessness in James’s voice as we stared at each other, wasn’t all from the wind, but the result of appalled shock. The spell for causing unbearable pain that Lucius Malfoy had flung at us was among the three darkest known to Wizardkind. One of the so-called “unforgivable” curses, its use, even once, was good for a life sentence in Azkaban Prison. 

Around us, the trees sighed in a gentle breeze. The sound was clearer, more real to me than that of my own voice, which seemed to be coming from a long way off. From somewhere in a dream, maybe. Or a nightmare. “Merlin’s Beard, James! This makes me think the Prophet really is onto something when it says how bad things are getting. And, much as I hate to believe the idea, I guess this seals it. Malfoy and Snape showing up like that, right after we did, as good as seals it. There’s got to be a spy somewhere in the Order.” 

James ran a thoughtful hand through his tousled hair. “Well, unless it really was all the person in red who was trying to score points with his master by laying that trap for us. Who was trying to draw us out into the open. Start identifying those of us who are working for the Order. Blowing our cover, Lily calls it ” 

I considered the idea. Being manipulated that way- and so successfully at that, was not a pleasant thought, but better than believing one of those laughing, familiar faces in the study this afternoon belonged to a traitor. “Well,” I said after a moment. “You’re the one who got a chance to read the note. What do you think?”

“No, I don’t think it was a trap. I think it was genuine,” he said after a moment, then turned to walk away from the bike and round the corner of the house. He stopped on the front step, his hand on the knob, but he made no move to go in. “And, for that matter, it might not mean we have a spy, or even that there was a trap. At least not one set for anybody in the Order. That person we were supposed to meet could’ve slipped up. Gotten careless or desperate enough to make a mistake that made their own people suspicious. I think whoever it was that wrote that note had some serious questions about what Voldemort and his Death-Eaters are getting up to. He or she didn’t exactly say so on the paper, but I think whatever the Dark Lord is planning, is going to get a lot worse than anything that’s happened up til now. And it’s more than this person can stomach.” 

I shuddered. “Who can blame them, if Voldemort’s followers are resorting to the unforgivable curses? Malfoy certainly didn’t think twice about using that spell for inflicting pain. Makes it seem bloody well possible the Death Eaters would use the imperious curse to make people act against their wills, too, doesn’t it? If they’d do that, would they hesitate to use the killing curse as well? James! Allastor’s going to need to hear about this! And Professor Dumbledore as well.”

“They’ll have had several reports already, at least that it was Malfoy and Snape who showed up at the contact point.” he sighed. “Before you got to the meeting, Moody was going around to various people one by one, and arranging to have The Digs and several nearby streets watched. Both to offer you and I some protection and to get an extra chance of verifying the identity of the person in red. But none of them will know what went on inside the place, and probably not about the curse either. Look, I’ll go ahead and get a couple of owls sent out.” James shrugged. “After all this, I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight anyway. I’ll have Lily read them, too. Hear her take on all of this.”

“Okay. Good idea. Lily’s a wise Witch.” I said, then fell silent as I thought of her waiting somewhere just beyond the door to the quiet house. It was so unfair. If we were living in different days, she and James would be spending their time making happy plans for the birth of their first baby, instead of helping devise urgent ones to stop Voldemort. 

James and I stood looking at each other for a long time through the faint glow of a candle shining down from an upstairs window. There was so much to say and yet no words that could say it any better than the silence of old friends that hung in the darkness between us. Less than an hour ago we’d both believed our work for the Order had led us a long way from the bright, adventurous idealism with which we’d entered it. That journey had been only a few steps compared to the miles of ominous, darkening road we’d traveled together since then.

“Guess I’ll shove off then.” I said at last. Before I turned away, I had an impulse to tell him to be careful. I swallowed it back when I saw my thought already reflected in his eyes and in the motion of his hand as it reached toward me, as if to restrain me from leaving. It wavered there an instant, in the air between us, before James sighed, shook his head and let his hand drop.

“Okay, good night then, Sirius,” he said. Opening the door, he stepped into a warm bright stream of candlelight. Glanced over his shoulder, gave me half a tired smile. “Stop by tomorrow, will you? Let us know if you get that lease for your shop.”

“All right. See you tomorrow, then, James. Say good night to Lily for me,” I said, walking into the darkness where my bike waited, then swung myself aboard. Had it only been this afternoon when I’d talked to the man about that nice little space for let? I’d thought at the time that I might fly by there this evening after my meeting with Regs. Enjoy another proud look at the place where my bike shop might be one day soon, then take the memory of it back to my flat to dream over through the night. 

I’d didn’t do either, though. 

Visit the shop. Or go back to a flat that would be too full of silent, lonely questions. 

That meeting, that thought, even that pleasant little dream of a bike shop, seemed too many years old now to be quite real anymore. The man they’d belonged to had been decades younger than the one who went speeding in grim silence up toward the flat and indifferent stars. 

Instead, I flew as high, far and fast as I could, leaning over my handlebars. Squinting into the wind as if I might catch one last glimpse of that younger Sirius. Thinking, wishing maybe, that, if only for one final moment, I could fit myself back into his sweet old eager and innocent world. Realizing that, if I managed to reach that space at all, it was really no more than a brief detour along the way to a future full of uncertainties. Knowing above all else that, like James, I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight. 

It wasn’t until the sun rose over the horizon and began its climb through the eastern sky that I tethered my bike in it’s usual spot beside a building off Diagon Alley. Tired enough to tumble headlong onto my pillow and from there into dreamless sleep, I made my heavy footed way up the stairs to my little flat. 

As I swung open the door and stepped inside, I was greeted by a repeated tap, tap, tapping sound at the window.

A large, brown barn owl was fluttering on the sill. As I crossed the room, it leaned in close and again rapped on the glass with its beak. One, two, three, quick, impatient taps. Even before I could raise the sash and gather it in, I saw my name written loud and black across the parchment fastened to its leg and recognized the spiky writing. 

It was my Mother’s.


	5. The Homecoming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Family...

The Homecoming

And now, here I was, as summoned, standing in the early morning sunlight, gathering the nerve to go and push open the wrought iron gate and face what lay beyond.

I needn’t have bothered. As I turned from my bike and made my way along the fence the serpents that formed the lock uncoiled and the gate swung open before me. 

The house was smaller than I remembered it. A bit at least. Not enough to diminish the dark oily feel that surrounded the place. The garden gate closed with a loud metallic clang and, behind me I heard the soft rustle of the property resettling itself amid the spells that hid it from all but the eyes of select Wizards. At once there came that sense of being shut in, as familiar as though it hadn’t been more than five years since I’d last been here. 

I stared around the front garden. Why did all the old emotions have to surface, today of all days? I knew the mix all too well- two parts hopelessness, three parts dread, four parts fury and one part nameless longing. I didn’t want to be having them right now, but as I searched myself for other feelings, all I found was a numb, cotton wrapped disbelief.

That note my Mother had sent to me was wrong.

Had to have been.

Because there was no way…

That Regulus was…

No bloody way that he was…

I couldn’t say the word, even in the silence of my mind and have it make any sense.

Because Regulus could not be dead…

But so the note, addressed to me in my Mother’s spiky writing, had informed me.

It didn’t seem possible. 

Regs and I had chased each other around this garden- past that old statue of a rearing centaur in the middle of the lawn, swerving our little-kid broomsticks right between its forelegs. We’d played Wizard’s chess on the bench along the path there. If I held my breath I could almost hear the echoes of our laughter.

It didn’t seem fair.

I was older. I learned my letters first and laboured to read out loud to him. I’d learned to play chess and snap and gob-stones first and then taught the games to him. I’d gone off to school first. I’d done… well… everything first... How could he be first to-?

No. It couldn’t be right.

Regulus was the one who knew what he wanted to do, to be. The one with a plan for his life. I disagreed with the choices he made. Hated the awe in which he held Lord Voldemort, whose love of dark Magic and spiteful, pureblood attitudes first divided our family, and were now pulling apart our whole bleeding community. I was furious enough to try, unsuccessfully, to contact him when the rumour reached me he’d joined the Dark Lord’s Death-Eaters. But, hidden deep under all that, was my reluctant envy of Regs, for his sense of purpose and direction, his pride in supporting what he’d believed, at least until lately, was a noble cause. 

How could all those things have been snuffed out as quick and final as a candle flame in a random gust of wind?

It made no sense. No sense at all.

Not when I’d only just gotten that note from him, the first time he’d made contact with me since I was thrown out of the House of Black all those years ago. That note that had whispered to me from the pocket of my robes all day yesterday.

Siri…

Regs…

It had to be a mistake.

After all, nothing had come of that other note, had it? The meeting at the Leaky Cauldron that he’d suggested in it had never happened. Maybe my Mother’s words were just as empty. Maybe both notes were nothing but a cruel hoax. They could have been sent by someone else altogether, couldn’t they? If I turned now, walked through the gate and rode very fast out of Grimmauld Place, without speaking to anyone here, I could carry that idea safe away with me. 

But my stubborn feet took me along the path without slowing. Up the steps to the front door with that same ugly old snake’s head knocker that I remembered. A fit of wild, treacherous laughter threatened to burst up my throat and spatter the crawly, repulsive thing. Was there a prescribed etiquette for banished people like me? Was I supposed to knock like a polite guest or open the door and walk in? 

I raised a reluctant hand.

Like the gate had done before it, the door opened. Kreacher, the House Elf, glared up at me for several long, furious seconds before stepping aside. 

“Young Sirius took his time getting here, didn’t he?” Kreacher addressed the question to nobody in particular before answering it himself. “Kept Kreacher’s Mistress waiting, didn’t he? Raised better than that, he was, Kreacher knows. Kreacher saw how the Mistress brought him up, right in this House! Ungrateful whelp he always was, too! And Kreacher sees how the young Master insults the poor Mistress by entering her presence in garments that no proper Wizard would put on! Clothes only a dirty Muggle would wear! But Kreacher knows that’s what comes of running with those filthy Blood Traitors young Master Sirius calls his friends, oh yes, he does.”

I drew a deep breath, held my head higher and stepped forward. “Nice to see you, too, Kreacher,” I said. Hoped the flippant words would brace me against the tide of cold dread that washed over me as I crossed the doorstep. 

My Mother stood a few feet behind the House Elf, surrounded by the dimness of the front hall, close enough to have answered the door herself. She was shorter than I remembered, but no less commanding with her hard dark eyes and spring-trap jaw. She looked me over, head to foot and scowled. “So, you’ve come.” 

I nodded. Searched her face for signs that would tell me whether what I’d read in her note was true, or only a bad dream caused by last night’s lack of sleep. Was there any puffiness round her eyelids maybe, or the redness of tears on her high boned cheeks? Regs was her youngest baby, her good son, the one she called “darling”. Could she have a hollow ache inside her that matched mine? If she did, it was hidden deep. I saw no evidence of it as she gestured me toward the parlour. Maybe it was just that whatever she felt right now was nothing she wanted to share with me. Or maybe, yeah, maybe, this had all been a terrible mistake. 

I held back, standing by the railing of the tall staircase that led to the floor above where Regs’s and my old rooms had been, and, before any dangerous hope took root, made myself ask the question. “Yeah. Yeah, I came. I’m… Well, I’m here. I had to know. It- it’s true then?”

“Do you think that we would have had any reason to summon you here if it wasn’t?” Without sparing me a second look, she turned and walked, head high, into the parlour. ?”

Her words were like a slap. Whether it was the impact of the truth they held, or the icy tone in which she delivered them, I wasn’t sure. Only knew they slammed hard into my gut and knocked the breath out of me as they rang in the quiet hallway. 

Almost against my will, I found myself walking, rubber legged, into the fire-lit room behind her. It hadn’t changed. The glass case was still by the window, full of dark arts objects glittering and ominous in the morning sun. The gold embroidered tapestry of the Black Family Tree hung beside it. I turned away from them. Glanced instead at the bookshelves lining one wall from floor to ceiling. Then studied the big desk in the corner. Its smooth wooden surface was covered with ledgers, quills, stationery parchments and the usual scatter of framed photographs. Near its edge, black headlines screamed from this morning’s Daily Prophet. 

Dark Suspicions Surround  
Death or Disappearance of Wealthy Young London Wizard!

Disappearance… 

All over the country the last months. Unconfirmed reports of disappearances, nothing proven. The names of strangers, discussed at Order meetings. Ominous. Frightening enough to wake a person up in the middle of the night. But only rumours. Not quite real. Speculations. Reluctant questions still seeking answers.

My own words of less than a day ago. You know as well as I do, you can’t believe every rumour you read about in the Prophet 

I tried not to look at that headline, or see the photographed face to the right of it. Instead, I stared at the spot at the front of the desk where the straight-backed chair fit beneath it. When we were little, Regs liked to pull the chair out and use that space as a cave when we played dragon. 

My gaze traveled across the huge Oriental rug in the centre of the room. We’d played a lot of great games of Exploding Snap in here, too. Once, when the cards exploded a little too hard, it’d cracked the window. Nori, my favourite of all the House Elves, used her Magic to repair it without our parents ever being any the wiser.

And there, across the expanse of carpet and all the memories it held, was my Father, sitting in his usual chair by the fire. When his gaze lifted to mine, I saw the grief I’d searched for in my Mother’s eyes was etched in his face. His eyes widened, lit for a moment with some emotion I couldn’t name. Joy? Gratitude? Relief? Rising to meet me, he stepped forward, touched my arm. His fingers pressed, squeezed, almost as if he were checking whether I was solid. “Welcome home, Son.”

“Hello, Father,” I raised a tentative hand to touch his shoulder, as I returned the greeting. Hadn’t he been taller than I was the last time I’d seen him? Had that grey been in his hair?

Off to his left, my Mother coughed. Sighed. Scowled. I could hear the old, impatient tap of her foot. 

I looked from one parent to the other. Listened to the loud, slow ticking of the mantle clock. Felt the heat of the morning sun through the window mixing with that from the fire and pulled off my leather jacket. Made a careful ritual of folding it over my arm. Held the comfort of its weight against my chest as I waited for someone to speak. 

Merlin’s beard, I didn’t want to ask. Didn’t want to say Regs’s name out loud. As long as I could keep from doing that, there was a chance- maybe not a big chance, by the look in my Father’s eyes- but a chance anyway- that this wasn’t final. 

I drew a breath. Heard the tremour in my voice. “What happened?”

“We’re still piecing it all together,” said my Father. He sounded tired. Exhausted. His voice was as clear and quiet as always, but he spoke in bursts and stops, as if it was hard to find and gather up words. Sitting down, he motioned me to an overstuffed chair near the desk. He didn’t wait for me to seat myself before he continued. “What we’ve been told so far is Regulus apparently wanted to have a meeting with the Dark Lord. It seems he was overheard saying he didn’t like the way some of the Death-Eaters were operating. Felt they were acting without honour and wondered if anyone had made Lord Voldemort aware of the way they used certain charms and curses to control those who opposed them-”

I shuddered. Charms and curses. As I sank into the chair, I could almost see the red flash in the darkness of the alley last night, hear Lucius’s echoing shout. “Crucio!” 

My Mother’s shooing hand dismissed my Father’s explanation. “Rumours! Vile, baseless lies! He was framed by a vicious coward who wanted to ingratiate himself with the Dark Lord! Someone who envied Regulus his position within the Death-Eaters inner circle!” She swept to the mantle, swung round to face us. “As if Regulus would ever imagine Lord Voldemort wasn’t enough of a leader to know exactly what his followers were doing! That he could believe anything so foolish as that the Dark Lord would oppose the use of valuable tools like the cruciatus or imperius curses to stop these filthy, Muggle-loving turncloaks who are despoiling our world!”

She stared me up and down, her nose wrinkling as she took in my jacket, jeans, trainers and striped rugby shirt. “It wouldn’t surprise me,” she went on in a voice that was quieter, but not softer. “If someone pretended to embrace our cause, then tried to create distrust among its supporters by casting suspicion onto one of Lord Voldemort’s most ardent followers. Deceitful scum!”

A spy in the Death-Eaters? The idea worked its way through the cotton numbness around my mind. Faded my Mother’s voice to a rise and fall that, for a moment went a long, merciful distance away. The Death-Eaters would call someone like that a traitor while we in the Order would contend he was brave for risking himself that way. Even call him a hero maybe. Wasn’t that what the Death-Eaters would call their spy, the traitor, we suspected might be leaking our plans and secrets to the Dark Lord? How did all the lies, all the sneaking around, make our side so different than theirs? 

How would Albus, or Allastor think we should deal with someone like that if we were to learn their identity? 

Well, one thing was certain- they wouldn’t think of the cruciatus or imperius curses simply as valuable tools! Maybe that was the difference! And what a huge one that was! Dizzying thoughts. I shook my head. Tried to clear it. Maybe my Mother would say something more about Regs. Had to concentrate. Sort through the ranting and listen for the grief or confusion that must be at the centre of it. Watch her pace back and forth in front of the mantle, her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides, fists to claws, fists to claws. 

“Foul, treacherous lies! Suggesting that Regulus was ever less than loyal to the Dark Lord and his vision for making our community strong, purifying our bloodlines, restoring power to our ancient Houses and…”

I didn’t want to hear about Voldemort. “What about Regs-” I interrupted. “Is he? Is his…” I swallowed hard, resettled the leather jacket on my lap. Realized the word I was trying to avoid was “body”. “Have you seen him? Is he here?”

Why had I asked that? Did I want to see him if what they said was true? See a mask that had Regs’s features, without the person I’d known shining out from behind them? Would it be better to remember him as I knew him when we were kids? Or did I need to stand by him and find a way to say goodbye, mourn the reunion we might have had?

Merlin’s beard, this wasn’t happening. Couldn’t be. Not when last night I was planning to take him to my flat and show him where I kept the food and butter beer! 

“No,” said my Father. “He’s not here. They wouldn’t give him to us. Wouldn’t let us so much as see him, let alone bring him home. Ivor Lastrange told me Lord Voldemort declared that because Regulus- well, because he died a traitor, he didn’t deserve…”

“He was no traitor!” my Mother interrupted. “Arcturus, how can you even repeat such a thing? It was a lie! A vile, vicious…”

“Nocturna, please, I know it was.” My Father’s voice was weary.

“Mother, let me get this straight,” I searched for the sense of what she said, through the cotton batting filling my head. Was she defending Regulus, or Voldemort? “Are you saying Regs was condemned based on what you believe is a lie?”

Her eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed into bright, angry slits as she glared at me. “What do you mean, believe? Of course it was a lie! Nevertheless, Regulus would be the first one to say that Lord Voldemort would have no choice but to do what he did!” 

As her words spattered the walls, the cotton numbness tore apart, leaving a deep, wrenching void that separated the truth of this moment from my hopes of yesterday. 

My hope that Regs and I would meet. Talk like we hadn’t in years. Find some of the closeness we shared when we both lived in this house. It wouldn’t have been hard, would it? We hadn’t parted in anger when I left here, had we? I could still see the look in his eyes as we stood in the hall that last morning. What passed between us had been sorrow and a kind of resigned confusion. Things that could be repaired… 

Or the hope that, last night, kept finding reason after reason after reason for his not showing up, even after I’d left the Leaky Cauldron. 

Even that last hope that leaped ahead of me to the window of my flat this morning, telling me, before I’d seen the writing on the message, that the owl on the sill had come from Regs, saying he was delayed last night, wanted to set up another time to meet…

Now all those hopes were beyond my reach, weren’t they? 

Because all my Mother’s wild ranting meant that Regs was- really was- dead- wasn’t he? Somewhere beneath the stunned numbness, was an ache. Growing with every breath I took. Bigger than I thought possible while I was riding over here this morning! Because now there were no more ways to believe it wasn’t true. 

But what my Mother was saying about his death didn’t make any sense.

“Are you saying?-” I raised my eyes to her. “It was Voldemort who condemned Regs? That it was your precious Voldemort who wanted him to be killed?”

Horrible word. Bitter taste in my mouth.   
“What a ridiculous question!” she exclaimed. 

Her words were no comfort to the spreading emptiness where my hopes for Regs had been. But I sagged a little in the chair as a certain relief washed through me. I’d gotten that part wrong then. Regs wasn’t killed by someone he’d admired- almost worshiped for years. Voldemort was cruel. Evil. A shatterer of dreams. His vindictive, pureblood ideals were tearing our community apart til it bled! But all the discussion in the Order as to what unspeakable lengths he’d go to, the talk of murder, the idea that he was turning on his own followers, maybe those horrors, at least, were beyond him.

The thought was hardly formed, when my Mother stepped toward me, almost spitting her words in my face. “What kind of fool did I raise you to be? The Dark Lord has to make an example of anyone who undermines his authority, doesn’t he? Whoever framed Regulus did a thorough job if they managed to fool the Dark Lord himself! And, believe me, when that person’s deceit is discovered, he’ll make certain they pay for their acts ten times worse than what Regulus had to!”

This was crazy! My Mother’s anger wasn’t directed at Voldemort or what he’d done to Regs, but at me! She was defending the Dark Lord against my accusations! 

“Is that all you can talk about? What Voldemort does?” I leaped to my feet as her knife sharp words cut away the last of the cotton numbness. I wanted to grab her, shake her til her teeth rattled. See something in her eyes besides zealous rage. Maybe a reflection of the pain that was spreading through me. Maybe hear an echo in her voice of the tears tightening my throat. Before my hands could close on her shoulders, I spun away. Walked to the window, the desk, the window again, where I stood, gripping the sill and staring out at the centaur in the garden. 

I drew a long, shuddering breath, but couldn’t quite keep all of the anger out of my voice. “Instead of telling me about him, why don’t you tell me about Regs? That you know how hard he tried to honour your wishes? Measure up to all your expectations?”

“Of course I knew that, you ignorant boy!” she snapped. “I shared his cause!”

“His cause?” I swung round to face her. A horrible, humourless laughter was trying to claw its way up my throat. My voice cracked as I worked to push it back down. “His cause? You shared his cause? His cause wasn’t Voldemort! It was making you proud of him! Wasted effort, wasn’t it? When he probably went to his bleeding grave never knowing whether he managed it!”

“Don’t speak to your Mother like that!” As my Father came to his feet, his rare shout whip-cracked off the walls. “Regulus did what was expected of him! Of course we were proud! We didn’t need to tell him so. He knew what he was doing. Knew that, in any battle, there are bound to be losses, painful sacrifices-”

“Martyrs!” shrieked my Mother.

“Yes, martyrs,” said my Father, his voice dropping to its usual quiet tone. I heard the crack in it, the heavy sigh. “Regulus knew his duty to Lord Voldemort and the values of this family and did it. It’s time you recognized yours!” He shook his head as his eyes traveled over my clothing. “You know, Sirius, we’ve been patient with you. Allowed you to go out on your own. Learn how to survive on your wits. To be a clever and resourceful wizard in your own right, as befits the heir of an ancient House. But an end to all this youthful rebellion is long overdue. It’s time you come home, put on some decent robes so you can take your place within Lord Voldemort’s inner circle, and, like your brother, carry out your responsibilities to the House of Black.”

Allowed? He said they allowed me to go out on my own? Like my leaving had been his idea? Like it had nothing to do with anything I might think about what it meant to live in this house or be a part of this family? 

“My responsibilities? To the House of Black…?” 

Was that what he’d said? Really? The mantle clock ticked, ticked, loud and slow. Loud and slow, for a long, long time as I stood in the still parlour. The air pressed in closer and closer around me, waiting for me to say something more. 

I looked at my Mother. She wouldn’t want to see her darling replaced with a foolish, ignorant boy! How could she, when she was the one who’d banished me? The one who had summoned me back here with such obvious reluctance? But she stepped to my Father’s side and nodded bitter approval at his words.

There was no sound but the clock. Ticking. Ticking. Loud and slow.

“But you said I was no longer a part of this family.” 

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous!” That word again, spat in my direction. “Your blood carries a debt of honour and service to this House and to those to whom it gives its loyalty. To our Liege Lord, Voldemort. That is the duty and sacrifice, the pride and privilege of families such as ours. Being young and foolish does not entitle you to walk away from that on a whim.”

Did they believe I’d left this house as an act of youthful rebellion? On a whim? Couldn’t they understand they’d asked me to make choices it wasn’t in me to make? That I hadn’t inherited their attitudes with my Father’s build or my Mother’s dark hair?

Would it be a whim walking out on a Mother who found the reputation of her family more important than the people born into it? Who could defend the murder of her child as the justifiable result of a mistake? Or a Father who, despite his obvious sorrow, was actually proud he’d sacrificed his son in service to Voldemort? Couldn’t they see how the casual cruelty the Dark Lord inspired was the reason I’d left? Like watching my Mother fly Nori about as if she was an object? Or my Father discussing Tonks like she was a dirty little family secret while she stood in this room not ten feet from him? 

No. They hadn’t seen it then, wouldn’t see it now. Even when that cruelty had caused Regulus’s death. 

In the stillness, I could almost feel a touch on my sleeve. Hear Lily’s words of yesterday afternoon. “You had a line you wouldn’t or couldn’t cross. One that made you walk away.” 

No, it wasn’t youthful rebellion. Or a whim. Hadn’t been then. Wouldn’t be now.

Because I could see it as clear as if it was drawn in a black slash across the carpet between us.

How did my parents think I was supposed to settle into this room, embrace the dark magic that was the proud legacy of this place? Slip into the jagged gap where Regs had been until- what? Just days? Hours ago? Replace him as if he was one more pawn to be moved about on a chessboard? 

I’d seen so much sadness in my Father’s eyes when I came in. Sadness for the bright child who liked to play dragon’s cave under the desk behind me, the eager kid who loved a good fierce game of Wizard’s Chess and could beat anyone in the house at it before he went off to school. There may have been some comfort in sharing our memories. In managing a few shaky laughs as we recalled how he got the suit of armour in the hall to march in place and later taught it to tap dance. Maybe shed a few hot tears together for the hopeful dreamer who tried out for the Slytherin Quidditch team four separate times and never made more than alternate? How could he set them aside, cover the wounds with a stony mask and talk, so soon, of duty? Speak of responsibility to this stupid House rather than of the love we shared for someone who gave his life for it? It wasn’t right! Wasn’t fair! Fury squirmed deep within the aching void in my gut. 

That sense came again, a whisper light touch on my arm. Lily’s words which I’d only half understood yesterday.

“Not everybody has that line, Sirius! Or they get so caught up in looking at all the promises Voldemort dangles in front of them they eventually lose track of where they drew it. That’s especially true for his closest supporters.”

There was something steadying in her words. The shivers in my gut eased a bit. “Is that all you can think of?” I asked, stunned to find it was sadness, not a shout that cracked my voice. 

My sorrow for Regs, I could understand. But along with it, mixed in with my anger, there was an ache of sorrow for my parents as well. Mixed with a weary sort of pity for how Lord Voldemort’s lies and promises had almost completely numbed them to the injustice of losing their son. 

Neither of them spoke. 

The clock ticked.

I hugged my jacket closer to my chest. Heard that sorrowing bewilderment in my words. “After five years without a word, you summon me here to say my brother is dead. Instead of talking about what he meant to all of us, what you want to tell me is I can fill his place in the Death-Eaters.”

“It was what Regulus would have wanted,” began my Father. “You could carry on his work for our family’s place in Lord Voldemort’s court-”

“No, Father,” I shifted the jacket on my arm. Took a step backward, putting distance between us. “I can’t- won’t- do that. I don’t see how it honours him, giving service to the bloody murderer who ordered his death.”

My Mother took a step toward me. “I told you what happened! You owe a blood debt to this family.” 

“That’s not what you said when you banished me from it.” I gestured to the gold embroidered tapestry of the family tree near the window beside me, then pointed to a scorched, empty spot next to Regulus’s name. “You can’t have it both ways. You talk about honouring Regs, when what you want is another follower named Black for Lord Voldemort. Well, forget that. You were right before. I’m not part of this House.”

Shrugging into my jacket, I turned and strode toward the hallway door. There was none of the defiance that had marked my last departure from this place. Only that jagged, empty ache of sorrow. And an instant when I felt an uneasy prickle across my back. Had my Mother drawn her wand? Would she lift me off my feet like she had done so often years ago? To maybe fly me out of her presence? I didn’t look back to find out. 

As I passed the desk, my sleeve caught the edge of the nearest photograph. It toppled to the floor, face down. In a soft tinkling of crystal, the frame shattered, scattering bright sparkles across the carpet and over the tops of my shoes. I made no move to gather the pieces. My Mother would want the House Elves to tend to that anyway. But, more by force of habit than anything else, I bent to pick up the picture itself, flipped it over and prepared to set it on the desk.

I bit back a groan. “Oh, Merlin’s Beard, Regs!”

From the centre of it, he grinned up at me, brandished the Quidditch broom that had been his pride and joy, then gave me a jaunty wave.

I remembered the day that picture was taken. We’d been sitting in the garden, doing broomstick repairs, him working on his Meteor, me on my Shooting Star. Talking about having a match after lunch. First one in all the years since we’d been sorted into different Houses at school. It would be kind of fun, wouldn’t it, if only the rain held off? 

When the picture had been taken, we’d both been in it. 

But the rains had come. The match never happened. A week later I’d been banished from the family as well as from the photograph. 

Now, there he sat in the picture all alone, a bottle of broomstick polish on the bench beside him. Proud son of the House of Black, with no idea of what his future held. Smiling in the summer sun, every hair in place as usual, not a rumple or wrinkle in his deep red robes. Amazing how much he’d always favored the colour red. Wore it a lot when we were growing up.

Bloody hell!

Red.

I could hear James’s voice across a booth at The Digs talking about the unknown person we’d gone to meet. “It was in the note. They’re supposed to be wearing red…” 

Regs grinned up at me and those red robes glowed bright in the morning green garden.

I felt the sting of tears.

Could that mean that our contact…

Was to have been Regulus?

Of course, he wouldn’t have known I was one of the people who’d be at The Digs.

But he’d wanted to meet me at the Leaky Cauldron first, hadn’t he? To talk about what he needed to do. Whether in Wizard’s robes then or a Muggle shirt later, he must have thought of that colour as a bridge to clearer, simpler times. Like when we were kids. Like when he still called me Siri. As he had at the top of his note.

His dark eyes looked up from the photograph at me as the words that I’d read just yesterday echoed through my mind.

I’m probably already in way too far over my head to back away from what this has become. But I’m convinced it’s what I must attempt to do. I have some ideas that might, just might undo some of the damage that’s been done in our community… 

 

With a gentle fingertip, I traced the line of his cheekbone, touched the hand circling the broomstick. 

Oh, Regs, you idiot! I told him silently. You poor, daft, kind-hearted, lonely little idiot, you gave so much to our parents and they never deserved it. They could never see how much you loved them. How much you were willing to give to have them love you like you thought they loved me. It was my title they loved, Regs. Son and Heir of this stupid, sad sick House! And in the end, neither you nor I could stomach what living up to that position meant! 

His grin blurred. His image shook in my hand.

What had driven him to turn from Voldemort and his Death-Eaters? To walk away from this House? I might never know the details, but for Regulus too, there must have been a line he wouldn’t cross. 

The weight of my parents’ gazes pressed into my back. What would they say if I spun round and shouted at them that, in the end, Regs had been no more a follower of their precious Dark Lord than I was?

I blinked away the unshed tears. Shook my head.

There was no point. They had no reason to believe me and more reason than ever to believe in Voldemort and his cause. While they could do that, even if they no longer had a son, there would be the thought of a fallen hero they could cling to, grieve for. What good would it do, ripping that away from them, when I was finding at least a bit of comfort in that idea myself? 

My fingers tightened around the photograph of my brother.

So much I wished I could ask him. What had he had in mind that might undo some of the damage Voldemort had done? Would I ever know? Was it something he was planning to ask my help with last night? Something we might do together? Or something he had already done and wanted me to know about? To share with others who opposed Voldemort? Had he left a note somewhere? Or a hint of some kind to explain what it had been? 

In a kinder world, there’d be a guarantee I’d find out some day.

A kinder world…

James and I had toasted to that over bitter Muggle beer at The Digs, only last night. A world where people thought more like his parents and less like mine. The kind of world we wanted for his and Lily’s baby.

My Godchild.

I drew a deep, shuddering breath. After what I said, my parents wouldn’t want me to stay, any more than I wanted to. Or could. But they’d want, expect, me to put the photograph back where I found it.

I didn’t. Carrying it away with me was the closest I could come to helping Regs make his escape from the dark heritage of this House and the hunger of Lord Voldemort that had long ago consumed our parents. 

Instead, I slipped it into the inside breast pocket of my jacket, next to my heart as I strode into the hallway.

Almost soundless, the front door swung wide, releasing Regs and me into the morning light. As I crossed the garden, the centaur we’d chased each other round and the bench where we’d once played chess on summer afternoons, blurred with another bout of unshed tears. I kept walking. Fast. Wouldn’t look at that centaur. Wouldn’t look at that bench. Wouldn’t let the tears fall. Not here. Not in this place where the most honourable part of my brother would never be recognized, where his bravest act would never be acknowledged. 

Let my parents grieve the obedient child who once played here. Mourn the schoolboy who tried so hard to do all that was expected of him. My greatest sorrow was for the courageous young Wizard who had come of age and given his life to walk a path that was all his own.

Dimly, I watched the tall wrought-iron gate open, then listened as it clanged shut behind me. There was a low, rustling sound and a moment later the house had vanished, leaving me standing alone and shaking in the street beside my motorbike. I bowed my head, my hands clenching tight round the handlebars. I saw their brilliant, sun-washed silver breaking up as, at last, the hot tears ran down my cheeks. 

Through the blur, there came the dark suggestion of motion. I recognized it as a silent shadow closing in from behind me and instant before a hand grasped my shoulder. 

“Sirius?”

I raised my head. Turned. Blinked through tears at the dark haired figure standing close beside me. Felt the flood of relief even before the surprise took over. “James?”

“Thought you might be here,” his voice was quiet . “I saw the Prophet this morning.”

“The… the Prophet?” It took a moment before the word made any sense to me. Before I remembered the tall black words shouting from the desk in the parlour. Death or Disappearance… How hard I’d tried not to look at them, not to believe them, not to see the face of the handsome, dark-eyed wizard in the picture beside them. How I’d tried to block them out with yesterday’s words. You know as well as I do, you can’t believe every rumour you read about in the Prophet 

James nodded. “Yeah, it was in the headlines.” 

“Oh, man, James, they got it right this time! It was true! The contact we were to meet last night? It was Regs!...”

James nodded. His grasp tightened, warm and strong on my shoulder, saying more about comfort than any word could have done It rested there, still and steady as the horror poured out in an aching torrent of words. 

“I could scarcely believe it when I realized…! Wouldn’t have if I hadn’t gotten his note. When I lived here, Regs was always such a little fool when it came to parroting every word our parents said about their loyalty to the Dark Lord. Never questioned any of it, just said how wonderful he was, how great his ideals were. And he could be thoughtless. Do unkind things, talk like an arrogant, stuck up idiot sometimes. But he was being ignorant, like our Father chose to be. Not trying to be cruel like our Mother could. He’d’ve liked to have a bit of prestige yeah, but under that, it was approval he wanted! To be more than just the second son of an old family. I don’t know what turned him against Voldemort and his lot. But someone figured it out that he had. Tipped somebody else off and now… Well, like you said, you saw the Prophet! All the rumours these last months? The deaths? The disappearances? They’re true, James, they’re all true!” 

Still, James remained silent. Just stood close beside me with his hand on my shoulder. It remained there as, bit by bit, I felt my tears and shaking slow, then stop.

When, a while after that, he spoke again, his voice was unhurried, almost casual. “You think you’re ready to drive this thing?” He quirked an eyebrow at my bike.

I realized I was still holding on to the handlebars. I drew a deep, shuddering breath. Shrugged. Nodded. Almost laughed. Let go. “Yeah, I can do that. Wouldn’t want to leave it sitting here, after all. Kreachor might take it into his head to go for a joy ride.”

James smiled a little. “Okay, mate, come on then, let’s get you home.”

“Home?” I asked. “You want to come back to my place?” 

My little upstairs flat off Diagon Alley would’ve been a warm and inviting place to bring Regs last night. Now, with my Mother’s note lying stark and horrible in the middle of the kitchen table, I couldn’t see it as being anything but cold and desolate. 

“Don’t be daft,” said James. “You’re coming home to us. To our place.” 

I glanced back at the wrought iron gate, then at James. Found myself echoing his words like I was trying to understand the meaning of them. “Home? To your place?”

“Yeah, our place. You know, the place with the rose bush where you tether your bike? Lily insisted I bring you. For the next several days at least. You need family around you at a time like this.” 

“Family?” I echoed again.

James drew back so he could look at me, then gave my shoulder a little shake. “You’re my son’s Godfather, aren’t you? In my book, that makes you family. Right?”

I drew a deep shaky breath. Felt the aching sorrow swell in my throat, then ease a bit as another wave of relief swept over me. Hadn’t realized how much I dreaded facing the silence of an empty flat. How much I’d wanted, needed, to be with someone this morning. Even if it was my parents. Now, instead of Grimmauld Place, I could go to a warm and accepting place that would, at least for a little while, be home. To spend time with people, who, for much, much longer, were going to be my family.

Not of blood, but, even better, my family of choice.

I nodded at James. “Yeah, right. Okay, let’s go home then.” 

I turned. Got onto my bike and, a moment later, felt James swing himself up onto the seat behind me. We eased away from the kerb as I set the motor sound to purring. The noise drowned out any talk that might have passed between us, but the words forming themselves within my mind were strong and clear. Full of resolve. More resolve, more direction, than any I’d found since leaving school. More purpose than I’d known since the long ago night James and I decided to become annimagi to keep Remus company at the times of the full moon. 

They felt sure. Strong. Right. Not the words of a restless young searcher now, but the vows of a Wizard who, like his brother before him, had at last come of age. 

I will do all I can to stop Voldemort and his followers from coming to power in our world, whatever the cost. I will do whatever might be asked of me to help put an end to his cruelty and madness. I’ll get that shop like I planned, but in addition, I’m going to talk to Allastor Moody. Get trained in what it means to be a proper spy for the Order of the Phoenix. Do more than hope for that kinder world. I want to be one of those who helps to make it.

And I will honour my family of choice. Give it all the care, the loyalty and honour it has shown me today. Above all, I will protect James and Lily’s child, my Godchild, with all the wisdom, all the strength and all the love that is in me. 

I brought the bike round an a sweeping arc and spelled the motor sound up to its loudest, bravest roar. James’s arms tightened around my waist as, together, we sped out of Grimmauld Place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the final chapter of this story, but not of Sirius's... He'll be back!


End file.
